UPDATE: The story has progressed since this column was published. You can read John Ivison’s take here.

Joe Oliver sounded like Robin Williams in the Dead Poets Society, as he urged Canadians to carpe diem — seize the day.

The Natural Resources Minister was visiting an engineering company in Toronto to highlight new legislation aimed at streamlining regulatory reviews on big energy projects, first revealed in the March budget.

“We are at a critical juncture. The global economy has presented Canada with an historic opportunity….We must seize the moment if we want to tap into the tremendous appetite for resources in dynamic, emerging economies.”

[np-related]

To hear Mr. Oliver tell it, the problem of getting oil-sands crude to markets in Asia will be solved by his bill, which he claims will yield “timely, effective and efficient project reviews.”

The goal is to reduce to 24 months environmental reviews of major projects like the Northern Gateway pipeline from the oil sands to the B.C. coast. Mr. Oliver pointed out that some mine applications have taken up to six years before winning approval. “What kind of message does that send to investors?” he asked.

He has previously decried the intervention of “foreign special interest groups” into the regulatory process, with the intention of “undermining Canada’s national economic interest.”

The new plan will hand environmental review of smaller projects to the provinces, thus avoiding duplication arising from federal and provincial assessments of the same development.

In future, environmental oversight will be handled by three federal agencies, rather than the 40 or so departments currently involved.

Predictably, groups like Environmental Defence claim the new legislation gives Big Oil “a free pass to do whatever it wants,” saddling citizens with the bill for cleaning up oil spills and toxic contamination.

Mr. Oliver countered that the government will spend millions of dollars more on tanker safety and pipeline inspections to ensure those nightmare scenarios do not become a reality.

For the most part, these seem sensible reforms. The Northern Gateway should not be affected, since it is scheduled to end its joint review hearings before the National Energy Board and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency a year from now, having heard from 4300 people. A final decision is expected by the end of next year, within the 24 month deadline.

Despite the government’s clear bias in favour of the project, the critics’ claim that Big Oil has a free pass is hogwash. Criticisms by less hysterical environmental groups like the Pembina Institute that the legislation weakens environmental protection may have some basis of truth. Pembina claims that the federal environmental assessment regime is generally more rigorous than the provincial equivalent.

But it does not follow that oil companies have been given the go-ahead to pollute earth and water. It looks as if the new regs will give the government the ability to override any NEB decision, but such a course of action would inevitably face a host of legal challenges.

It’s not hard to see why Mr. Oliver’s press conference took a theatrical turn. The planned capacity of 525,000 barrels flowing through the Northern Gateway at $100 a barrel would boost exports by more than $18-billion a year. This is black gold for a government that sees exports still languishing below pre-recession levels. The combined contribution of Northern Gateway and the Keystone XL pipeline to the Gulf coast would add 1% a year to Canada’s GDP, according to the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.

But a much bigger threat to the prospects of a pipeline to the Pacific Coast than a stalled regulatory review process is the opposition of the citizens of British Columbia.

Opinion polls suggest a slim majority oppose Northern Gateway and will likely soon turn against Kinder Morgan’s plan to double the capacity of its Edmonton to Vancouver pipeline, once it sinks in that an additional oil tanker a day will have to pass beneath the Lion’s Gate bridge to reach Burnaby.

According to an Ipsos Reid poll, 52% of British Columbians believe the environmental risks outweigh the economic benefits (a higher number than anywhere else in the country, except Quebec).

The argument of pipeline boosters like Alberta Energy Minister Ted Morton that the project offers net benefits to British Columbia has not convinced many B.C. Liberal voters, one third of whom remain resolutely opposed (most NDP voters also oppose the pipeline, while BC Conservatives support it overwhelmingly).

And who can blame them? It’s human nature. You may be prepared to take a risk — in this case, an Exxon Valdez-like oil spill off the B.C. coast — if there is the potential for reward. But the benefits of the Northern Gateway will flow to Alberta and Ottawa. Very few jobs will be created in British Columbia and even the deals offered to First Nations such as the Gitxsan ($7-million over 30 years) were not rich enough to win support in that community.

There are potential solutions. The federal and Alberta governments could share some of the royalties the project generates, on the basis that if doesn’t win support in B.C., they will get 100% of bupkis. Another idea suggested by University of Calgary economist, Michael Moore, is for the B.C. government to impose a toll on the bitumen loaded onto tankers at Kitimat.

Whatever Mr. Oliver and his provincial counterparts resolve upon, it’s clear their biggest challenge is to persuade British Columbians that the benefits outweigh the risk of befouling their pristine province.